Not unlike true Louisiana marshland, the distinctive New Orleans metal scene is always full of life, even though its bands’ staunch refusal to compromise year in year out has kept the burgeoning scene ever underground. While all of its past and present talent delivers regular output that not even an amateur could nitpick, from the scandalous Eyehategod, to underrated sludge grinders Soilent Green, to Kirk Windstein’s riff machine Crowbar, every once in a while a mammoth crocodile emerges from the swamp, chomping through all fleshy beings standing in its way. Goatwhore, for a time only an under-funded side project created by Soilent Green vocalist Louis Benjamin Falgoust II and former Acid Bath and Crowbar guitarist/songwriter Sammy Pierre Duet, quietly emerged from the same fertile region in 1999, releasing their occult-obsessed debut The Eclipse of Ages Into Black a year later on Acid Bath’s former label, Rotten Records. Although some found fault with the album’s lo-fi production and inefficient distribution, both being responsibilities of the label, the fifteen-track onslaught was sufficiently researched and executed to make it an instant underground classic among fans of all that is old school, from black, death, and thrash, to hardcore and punk.

And while the ambitious leap forward taken on their follow-up, Funeral Dirge For The Rotting Sun, treated fans to deeper and darker textures reminiscent of later Celtic Frost and nineties’ black and melodic death metal, few could prepare for the quality of the band’s newest, A Haunting Curse. In what will undoubtedly be in many top tens, mine included, this is Goatwhore’s album. It has the Motorhead and Discharge feel to please the punks, authentic satanic themes ala Bathory, Venom, Celtic Frost, and Darkthrone to please the most discerning of original metalheads, and a spectacular Erik Rutan (Morbid Angel, Hate Eternal, Ripping Corpse) production job to reel in all the younger ones born into the world of Pro-Tools. While Metal Blade’s enthusiasm for Rutan’s work is surely riding high following his successful collaboration with Cannibal Corpse on the recent Kill, the label should take heed from Scott Burns’ saturated legacy and not start overusing his services. Not to knock his impeccable standard by any means, because in the past year, New Orleans can thank him for producing two of the best sounding albums the region has been blessed with since Dave Fortman’s on Crowbar’s 2001 classic, Sonic Excess In Its Purest Form: Soilent Green’s Confrontation and Goatwhore’s A Haunting Curse. It is showcased none the better than when the furious melodic black metal riff and accompanying blast beat stun the listener from the beginning of Wear These Scars of Testimony, kicking off a relentless, four-minute fire breather that immediately shows the band in a more commanding and less sprawling position than on prior albums.

Simultaneously one of the most enduring and underrated voices in extreme metal, Louis Benjamin Falgoust II finally has his distinctive growl mixed front-and-center on a Goatwhore album, where it has been on Soilent Green’s last four albums. Much like his perverse, storytelling lyrics in Soilent Green, Falgoust’s style does not veer from that norm in Goatwhore, the difference being a mythological, satanic current which has possessed this band from the beginning. These lyrics and the old school black and death metal components will likely help the band connect with metal audiences as the exceptional Soilent Green have not been as fortunate to do. Primary songwriter Sammy Pierre Duet, whose impervious track record includes founding cult heroes Acid Bath and performing and writing on Crowbar’s Odd Fellow’s Rest, Equilibrium, and Sonic Excess In Its Purest Form, gives a full body performance on A Haunting Curse. Like on Goatwhore’s prior albums, he continues to flaunt an impressive repertoire of riffs and tempos. But his memorable work on those albums remains unheard by most due to not only the record label issues described earlier, but also a more freewheeling incorporation of influences, rather than the remarkable improvement in overall songwriting and blending of influences he managed to acheive with A Haunting Curse. Until now, Goatwhore effortlessly succeeded in securing their cult status. With A Haunting Curse, they are unashamedly preparing themselves to compete with the big boys; recent opening slots for Suffocation, Fear Factory, and soon God Forbid shows Metal Blade’s faith in this band of underground legends. Unlike many of the trend-hopping, conflict-ridden youngsters that embarrassingly blow their chances, Goatwhore seem ready to make good on theirs.